Various studies have reported different conclusions over the safety and benefits of early tracheostomy in burns. Our study aimed to assess the role of prophylactic tracheostomy in treatment and improvement of outcomes in inhalational burns in India.

The nationwide opioid epidemic has substantially impacted economically-depressed regions in the USA. Eastern Appalachia has some of the lowest socioeconomic indicators in the USA and has suffered the highest rate of opioid-related fatality in 2016. Despite devoting considerable federal and state resources towards public health initiatives, the region continued to experience one of the highest death rates and sought alternative approaches to address the opioid crisis. Here, we describe a community-based co-creation initiative that convened diverse sectors and utilised design thinking principles to generate sustainable public health ventures towards addressing the opioid crisis. Participants of diverse backgrounds came together to attack key challenges and developed and implemented solutions, including a mobile application for naloxone delivery and exercise programs for high schools to promote healthy habits. Grassroots innovation efforts catalysed by the event strengthened community engagement and facilitated a sense of agency among participants. Through specific examples of initiatives that were launched, we provide evidence to encourage and highlight the value of healthcare innovation efforts in low-resource settings.

Although the national obesity epidemic has been well documented, less is known about obesity at the U.S. state level. Current estimates are based on body measures reported by persons themselves that underestimate the prevalence of obesity, especially severe obesity.

The rapid scale-up of antiretroviral treatment (ART) for HIV since the mid-2000s, mostly through disease-specific or “vertical” programmes, has been a highly successful undertaking, which averted millions of deaths and prevented many new infections. However, the dynamics of the HIV epidemic and changing political and financial commitment to fight the disease will likely require new models for the delivery of ART over the coming decades if the promises of universal treatment are to be met. Delivery model innovations for ART are intended to improve both the effectiveness and efficiency of the HIV treatment cascade, reaching new people who require ART and providing ART to more people without an increase in resources. We describe twelve models for ART delivery, which could be achieved through five categories of delivery innovations: integrating ART (“vertical ART plus”, “partially-integrated ART” and “fully-integrated ART”); modifying steps in the ART value chain (“professional task-shifted ART”, “people task-shifted ART” and “technology-supported ART”); eliminating steps in the ART value chain (“immediate ART” and “less frequent ART pick-up”); changing ART locations (“private-sector ART”, “traditional-sector ART” and “ART outside the health sector”); and keeping the status quo (“vertical ART”). The different delivery model innovations are not mutually exclusive and several could be combined, such as “vertical ART plus” with “task-shifted ART”. Suitability of the models will highly depend on local and national contexts, including existing health systems resources, available funding, and type of HIV epidemic. Future implementation research needs to identify which models are the best fit for different contexts.

There is growing evidence that political economy factors are central to whether or not proposed health financing reforms are adopted, but there is little consensus about which political and institutional factors determine the fate of reform proposals. One set of scholars see the relative strength of interest groups in favour of and opposed to reform as the determining factor. An alternative literature identifies aspects of a country’s political institutions-specifically the number and strength of formal ‘veto gates’ in the political decision-making process-as a key predictor of reform’s prospects. A third group of scholars highlight path dependence and ‘policy feedback’ effects, stressing that the sequence in which health policies are implemented determines the set of feasible reform paths, since successive policy regimes bring into existence patterns of public opinion and interest group mobilization which can lock in the status quo. We examine these theories in the context of Malaysia, a successful health system which has experienced several instances of proposed, but ultimately blocked, health financing reforms. We argue that policy feedback effects on public opinion were the most important factor inhibiting changes to Malaysia’s health financing system. Interest group opposition was a closely related factor; this opposition was particularly powerful because political leaders perceived that it had strong public support. Institutional veto gates, by contrast, played a minimal role in preventing health financing reform in Malaysia. Malaysia’s dramatic early success at achieving near-universal access to public sector healthcare at low cost created public opinion resistant to any change which could threaten the status quo. We conclude by analysing the implications of these dynamics for future attempts at health financing reform in Malaysia.